Farmers ' individual choices relating to agronomic practices are influenced by socio economic factors related to the farmer and his family as well as physical factors relating to the farm. Many studies that investigate these choices fail to recognise the importance of neighbours' influence on decision making. This research attempted to determine whether there exists a relationship between one farmer's choice and the choices of the neighbouring farmers in adoption of fertiliser recommendations in rubber cultivation of a sample of 393 smallholder farmers in one of the non-traditional rubber growing districts in Sri Lanka. Major aims of the research were to explicitly model spatial relationships in adoption of fertiliser application in rubber cultivation and to identify the factors that influence them. Bayesian Spatial Autoregressive Probit (SARP) model was used in the study. The neighbours ' influence was measured in terms of a spatial correlation coefficient. Results revealed that the spatial correlation coefficient was positive and statistically significant, implying a strong influence by neighbours on a decision by a particular farmer. The results also highlighted the importance of socio economic factors and soil characteristics in adopting these practices.
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Crepe rubber industry is one of the major water polluting industries in all rubber growing countries. There is a necessity to develop suitable treatment technologies for the management of this problem. Covered Activated Ditch (CAD) type test reactors set with Bio-brush media are very effective in rubber factory wastewater treatment. Out of four organic loading rates (OLR) and five specific surface areas (SSA) of media tested respectively, Bio-brush media with 200 m2/m3 SSA under 1.0 COD kg/m3/d OLR was selected as the best for CAD reactors and the average COD removal achieved was about 89%. Results revealed that at higher OLR, correction ofpH could be avoided for an efficient treatment and reactors with higher SSA of media were able to tolerate organic shock loads comparatively. The efficiency of treatment increased with increasing SSA of media and no special cycles were observed in removing biomassfrom the test reactor under any of the four OLRs tested. During maturation, chemical oxygen demand (COD), pH and suspended solids (SS) of treated effluent with 200 m 2/m3 SSA were about 100 mg/L, 6.7-7.2 and 26-43 mg/L respectively which were below the maximum desirable levels stipulated by the Central Environmental Authority of Sri Lanka. Apart from the rubber industry, CAD reactors could also be used for treating biodegradable liquid waste such as waste from the palm oil industry, rice processing industry, sugar industry and others.
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